This study presents a numerical examination of the land and sea breeze system (LSBS) that develops in the Wassaw Sound, located southeast of Savannah, Georgia and site of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games sailing competition. The project used the Pennsylvania State University/National Center for Atmospheric Research Mesoscale Model version 5 to simulate the diurnal circulations that evolve in the Wassaw Sound under varying flow regimes. Model runs were designed to examine the initiation, development, intensity, duration, and decay of the LSBS, with emphasis on the seaward component of the circulation. Thermodynamic and wind profiles used for model initialization were complied from 1082 Charleston, South Carolina soundings from 1946 to 1992 for the period 15 July through 15 August. Idealized model runs were conducted with all domains initialized to represent either calm, average, onshore, offshore, or along shore wind profiles developed from the sounding data. Idealized model output showed that under weak forcing, there is a clear transition from the land breeze to the sea breeze and that as the land breeze decays, it migrates seaward as the sea breeze forms at the shoreline.

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